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Ben Kuchera's Take on Bigot-Shaming

or Why Threadlocking Doesn't Solve The Problem
or Nalano Risks a Perma-Ban

Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade Report wrote a bit on the Miss America pageant where-in Indian-American Nina Davuluri won and the twitverse was immediately deluged with racist commentary directed not just towards her but to her. It reminded me of morons going apeshit over Marc Anthony singing the national anthem at a MLB All-Star game, and the response was as swift as it was harsh: WTF is wrong with these unreconstructed cretins, they should go back to the caves they crawled out from.

Ben, however, argued that even acknowledging them gives them credence and that we should simply ignore their bigoted remarks. He supposed that, by doing so, the problem will simply go away, as the proper response to a troll is to starve him. To wit,

Perpetuating the idea that some groups are at war with Americans who don't share their values isn't helping anyone, and that's the message sent when we fight fire with fire. It just escalates the sense of distrust, hatred, and fear. We may feel like we're throwing water on the fire, but if you look closely you'll see that it's actually gasoline.

Mind you, this is the Ben Kuchera who started a twitter war with Eric Kain, and this is the same Penny Arcade of Dickwolves fame and the Paul Christoforo internet crusade. Gasoline is their repertoire.

The thing is, there are some groups that are at war with Americans who don't share their values, or more accurately, there are some groups that are at war with Americans who don't look like them. If it were just a couple loudmouth morons we could silence them and get on with our lives. However, it's quite a larger problem than that, and what ignoring them does is send the message that what they're saying and doing is implicitly tolerated if not condoned by the general American public. Again, this is the Penny Arcade where Mike Krahulik expressed resentment at PAX of having to take down his Dickwolves merchandise, and received raucous applause and cheers.

We exist in a gaming culture where Anita Saarkesian has to defend her gaming cred to people who make flash cartoons about beating her up and Jennifer Hepler quit because of the threats and hostility directed towards her and her family. This is a gaming culture where Carolyn Petit made the internet explode because she dared call a game she liked misogynist. To dismiss the problem as the work of a few trolls who can be ignored is grossly misrepresenting the problem, and if there's one tactic we've certainly tried a lot of, it's not acknowledging it.

In a sense, it's sort of like, well, rape culture. One may personally hold enlightened views and hold the opinion that rape, molestation and harassment are vile and disgusting, but if he's not willing to stand up and say something to an acquaintance who women feel uncomfortable around because he's unwilling to hurt his own relationship with that acquaintance, then he is contributing to a system that tolerates and condones that wrongness. Social pressure is not a passive action. It is an active action, and requires that people enforce it. To quote Edmund Burke, evil prevails when good men do nothing.

We do not move forward by letting the issue fester under the surface, unheeded. That's how you get places like the Capcom tournament where cretins openly defend their cretinism by saying it's "part of the culture;" that it really is their club. This sort of regression makes it paramount that we talk about this issue, because it is not solving itself simply by cultural osmosis. Ben Kuchera is wrong that if we just ignore it it will go away. If we just ignore it it gets worse.

As such I bring our attention back to RPS.

We are still a microcosm of this problem: We are not presenting a place where women feel invited. We don't have many female posters. We don't have hardly any female posters. What we do have is a policy of un-excellence which has had the unintended effect of squelching the discussion. Every thread on this topic has, without fail, ended in a lock. Not every topic, despite having been populated by cretinous, bigoted posters, has resulted in a ban. The cretinous posts themselves still remain in the locked threads.

The message as it stands is: We will not tolerate the discussion of these topics. This is not the message we want to send. We want to send the message that we are actively working to create an atmosphere where these topics can be discussed without the influence of these bigots, and that the bigots will not be tolerated.

Simply put, locking the threads will not make the problem go away.

Banning the bigots and explicitly stating why you are banning the bigots will. It will be a messy affair, and it has been a messy affair because of the absolute contempt these bigots engender and deserve, but it will be a step in the right direction, and will signal that RPS is putting its money where its mouth is. I want a call to arms to declare war on this incipient and insidious problem that plagues gaming and the tech world overall, and I believe RPS is both large enough to embody the problem but small enough to have an impact in eradicating it.

Last edited by Nalano; 20-09-2013 at 01:42 AM.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

I fully agree with swift, nasty banning of anyone who wants to act like scum.

I think it's important to make sure you don't over-highlight the truly terrible and miss the insidiously terrible though. Too many people think "Oh, I'm not THAT bad, therefor what I'm saying is ok!", and try to hide behind claims of "logic" and "equality" in their bullshit. They need to be treated just the same as those who are more blatant, especially because THEY are the people who really do most of the work in poisoning a community.

I also hope that the comments are cleaned up even more harshly. Today has shown that the comments on RPS are basically unusable - that filth infects them and has completely taken over. I am tired of "Well nobody really cares about women" or "Shut up social justice, how dare you be angry at me raping people" and the games-related bullshit that clogs up every comment thread moaning and whining about how DARE this game get attention or "I don't like this so these people who do are bad."

People is not against unjust laws, abusive laws. The reason people is not against unjust laws, is because have this horrible mindset that is the other people that will be affected by the laws. That normal people will be never affected by these laws. Even normal people that break the law thinks this way, .... laws are for outlawders, not them.

Tei, I don't worry about rules that will call for the banning of a bigot. This is because I am not a bigot. I do not think we should make fun of people for being lesbians, or make fun of them for being trans, like you have literally claimed we should do in the name of "equality". This is because I am a decent human being.

Tei, I don't worry about rules that will call for the banning of a bigot. This is because I am not a bigot. I do not think we should make fun of people for being lesbians, or make fun of them for being trans, like you have literally claimed we should do in the name of "equality". This is because I am a decent human being.

He hasn't 'literally claimed' that at all. In fact he hasn't even said the word 'equality' But it's good of 'a decent human being' like yourself to state otherwise. Shameful.

Not really sure what his article about Twitter reporting has to do with forums. I mean it might have something to do with RPS reporting of anything in the least bit sexually insensitive (and then ironically posting things like Boobjam and telling anyone who wanted a NSFW tag that they are oversensitive and don't deserve the time of day).

It certainly has nothing to do with locking threads on RPS because the threads have nearly zero visibility. They delete the scum posts on the blog because those are very visible, threads here. They are locked to prevent the community from setting itself on fire. Sometimes too early, sometimes too late. Has very little to do with the echo chamber.

That is why we can have this conversation here.

I should probably even start a thread compiling once again all the evidence that the "journalism" missed on the PAX boycott article. RPS writers won't give a damn, but the forum community can continue its discussions about the nature of poor reporting and off the cuff reactions RPS is becoming known for.

I'm new to the community, and i don't really post much, but i'll throw my 2 cents anyway. Excuse grammar and spelling and probable misuse of words, not a native english speaker here.

Point is, where would you draw the bigotry line?

For example. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever be apologetic towards rape, but the whole dickwolves controversy? I for one think that whole affair was a ridicoulous mess, and that the joke wasn't offensive in the least, unless someone wanted to be offended. Surely some fellas here would deem me a bigot after a few pages of back and forth.

Same goes fot the whole transexual mess again from PA. Personally i think the fella surely had a poor choice of words, then he got in my opinion overly bashed on, and he got defensive and raised the stakes (stupidly) and the whole thing was blown out of proportion. Point here being i'd agree with him when he said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "i'll respect her choice, i'll respect her as a person, i'llrefer to her as a female, but i won't be able to forget she has a penis". I have no doubt i'd be deemed a bigot once again.

See what i'm saying? A rule that implies banning people should have a certain amount of certainty, if the rule is too flexible, it would be just censoring opinions, plain and simple.

He hasn't 'literally claimed' that at all. In fact he hasn't even said the word 'equality' But it's good of 'a decent human being' like yourself to state otherwise. Shameful.

He did, but he deleted the post in the other thread because he was called on for it being off-topic by a mod. He was going on about how it's ok to make fun of lesbians for being lesbians and trans people for being trans, because that makes everyone equal, and how nothing should be "off limits".

Personally i think the fella surely had a poor choice of words, then he got in my opinion overly bashed on,

He was spewing hateful, factually untrue stuff that a quick look at wikipedia would be disprove and expressing a viewpoint that literally gets people killed.

and he got defensive and raised the stakes (stupidly) and the whole thing was blown out of proportion

He used another trans person as a shield, outing them to try to defend himself, using a form of "but I have a black friend!" that also puts the other in harm's way, after he flat out refused to talk to anybody else on the issue.

"i'll respect her choice, i'll respect her as a person, i'llrefer to her as a female, but i won't be able to forget she has a penis".

This is not what he said. He said that if you have a vagina you are a woman, end of story, in his eyes, and also use of terms such as "cis" make him "hate you". When people tried to explain it to him, he literally responded with "Don't bother tweeting at me", and when people then continued, he responded with "Then I am Batman. Please call me bruce".

So no, he didn't say what you're claiming at all and instead was spewing hate while refusing to acknowledge that transgenderness was a thing or even listen to people who were trying to calmly explain it. But it's fun to go after the fact with "Both sides were wrong!" and then pretend that the attackers were a lot more calm and nice than they actually were.

I'm not trying anything, i couldn't care less if the guy's considered the new hitler to be honest.

But i dinstinctly recall a tweet from him (no present in your link) when he said pretty much what i wrote.

If i'm wrong, and recall incorrectly, so be it, i got no problem with being wrong. But still, i don't really see anything "hateful" in his tweets. Ignorant? Probably, but i don't think 100% of RPS had any notion of the distinction gender/sex and the appropriate wordings for them. Should i be banned according to OP's policy proposal because of this?

Also, the whole thing about how the episode came to be should be taken into account imo (that sort of i think edu-game teaching about female masturbation, criticized and deemed offensive to transgender women because it only had vaginas, which prompted that first tweet by the PA bloke)

Also, i didn't mean to derange the topic, and go back to something i'm sure was discussed ad nauseam here on rps. my basic point is "where do you draw the line for a bigotry ban ---> too elusive and uncertain a rule ---> ban becomes censorchip"

He openly outed another trans person while claiming to now understand the issue, and giving no indication that said trans person was OK with being outed, essentially throwing somebody else's safety under the bus for his own self-image.

He did, but he deleted the post in the other thread because he was called on for it being off-topic by a mod. He was going on about how it's ok to make fun of lesbians for being lesbians and trans people for being trans, because that makes everyone equal, and how nothing should be "off limits".

This is the thread we're in and this is the thread you refer to, and I don't care for claims of 'he said, she said' relating to deleted posts in other threads.

This is the thread we're in and this is the thread you refer to, and I don't care for claims of 'he said, she said' relating to deleted posts in other threads.

Post reported for unsubstantiated accusations.

You keep defending those transphobes. Are there any other minorities you'd like to argue that deserve being made fun of while you're at it?

Tei's argument is ridiculous and falls flat, because it assumes everybody else acts like they do. I don't. I don't think we should make fun of people for being men or women or trans of cis or whatever. Tei does, so acting like somehow these rules are going to catch "innocents" is just plain silly.

Who's this person?

My mistake - the emails in his apology were published with permission, although I still argue very poor form. I apologize and have edited the original post.

You keep defending those transphobes. Are there any other minorities you'd like to argue that deserve being made fun of while you're at it?

I keep defending transphobes?

You care to find me the other posts I've made where I've defended transphobes please? Because that's a pretty bold accusation there stranger. Or should I just cut to the chase of reporting this post as well?

Would you like to restate what you DID say, then? Because as far as I'm aware, nobody's saying you can't make fun of anybody, just that you can't attack them for being women, trans, or whatever, and you disagreed, arguing about how those traits are open to mocking.

Edit: As in, "Keep pushing on", Kadayi. Mocking you for leaping to the defense of that, of all things. Not saying that you have continually done it.

In any case, already that has proven a really good example of how people are totally willing to shove bigotry under the rug - note how quickly people pretend Gabe said stuff he didn't, and didn't say stuff he did, and how it's OK to rely on not-shown tweets at how he's a good person who didn't MEAN all those nasty things you have proof of, but by god don't hold somebody's jerkiness against them if you can't back it up...

Dude, it is a colloquial phrase, referring to the fact that you are defending Tei. There is nothing indicating that you were defending any transphobes BEFORE Tei. Just that you are defending the guy who literally claimed he wants the right to make fun of trans people for being trans and lesbians for being lesbians.